Knowledge management practices in healthcare services

Purpose – The purpose of the study is to develop understanding about the role of information and knowledge in healthcare processes and thereby create a basis for practices that would better support the actual service provision. This paper seeks to model and analyze the service processes of two case settings: laboratory and radiology units of a Finnish regional healthcare system. Design/methodology/approach – The main actors, their knowledge needs, current knowledge practices and bottlenecks in knowledge flows were recognized. The paper combines conceptual analysis and empirical findings. The empirical data were collected in the autumn of 2010 and consist of 32 thematic interviews in two units of a healthcare organization in Finland. The themes of the interviews are related to current knowledge practices and processes. Findings – The paper exemplifies an approach that provides a systematic basis for analyzing different aspects of knowledge management in healthcare processes. The approach provides valuable insights for analyzing knowledge‐based foundations of health services and it is expected that this analysis helps elaborate the practical knowledge processes of healthcare organizations. Originality/value – The paper approaches health information management from the viewpoint of knowledge management discourse and highlights the importance of knowledge‐based value creation. Instead of mere information transfer or delivery the paper emphasizes the knowledge‐in‐use perspective. Despite the essential role of knowledge assets, the development efforts have mainly concentrated on solving local problems with context specific technical solutions.